"ATI's R5xx line was first released back in October 2005. The initial launch covered the X1800 and X1300 series, with the X1600 series following suit in November. Last month we saw the release of the new X1900 series too. Now, let me count the months from October to February; it is 5 months, right? Well, believe it or not, that's the number of months the new X1000 series is out in the market without Linux support. If you are unfortunate enough to own such a card, all you have is Matthew Tippett's statement in Phoronix."

When it comes to Open Source video drivers, the top dogs are Intel and SiS/XGI. XGI may even be releasing their 3D components at some point, which would instantly put them top of the pile.

Next best are S3/Via with the Unichrome and the older S3 cards such as the Savage. S3 remains silent on Open Source Deltachrome & Gamachrome drivers though, which loses them some serious points. Older Matrox cards from the G550 down used to be well documented and supported, but when the Parhalia was released they went deadly silent and pulled their previously-open Developers Relations site, along with all the chipset documentation. Boo, hiss. 3Dfx Voodoos are also documented, but they're of similiar vintage.

Then we come to the bottom of the pile; ATI & nVidia. ATI used to be fairly good with documentation for older chips. The Mach64 and R100/R200 are well understood and I believe the X developers were given documentation by ATI. The same is quite possibly true of nVidia, but I'm not certain on that.

So if you want to help promote Open Source, go buy an XGI and encourage them to release their complete driver source!